Bell: Kenney blasts drug site disorder

The latest cold snap brought a bit of good news for at least one neighbourhood.

For a week or so, the deep freeze toned down the out-of-their-bloody-mind screaming of the legions of meth addicts wandering around Calgary’s Beltline near the Sheldon Chumir drug site looking for money and looking to score and not giving a damn how they make that happen.

Premier Kenney doesn’t hold back when looking into the face of this rude reality.

He has never held back when it comes to the horror show around drug consumption sites.

He has never minced his words when it comes to the invasion of meth heads turning neighbourhoods in some Alberta communities into crap. Scary places. Threatening places. Ugly places.

He has never pulled his punches when it comes to the taxpayer-funded zombie movie cooked up by the previous Notley NDP government, the so-called working-class party showing no respect for the working class.

“It is bizarre we’ve had politicians who actually created a public safety crisis in a residential neighbourhood. They knowingly did so. Knowingly,” says the premier.

“People have an absolute right to be disturbed with the callousness and the regressiveness of decisions like that.”

They are disturbed.

You know the scene.

Meth users going to the drug site to shoot up, police calls for service in the surrounding area going through the roof and expected to go up some more. Additional cops brought in to help. They know it’s theatre of the absurd, up close and personal.

Citizens and businesses seen as collateral damage for the latest cause, casualties who should suck it up when they wake up and see their vehicle ransacked or their streets taken over by those acting out their meth-addled mischief and mayhem.

Yes, social disorder and crime up the ying-yang.

The Safeworks injection site at the Sheldon M. Chumir Health Centre is shown on Friday, February 15, 2019. Dean Pilling/Postmedia

A city council who couldn’t find their way with two hands and a flashlight. Zealot activists who don’t want to see or admit anything contradicting their little rainbows-and-unicorns world.

A stat. In one apartment block parkade in the past year the number of break-ins are double the number in the previous 14 years combined.

An image. I’ve mentioned it before.

A guy losing his mind and smashing his fist against a tree until his hand is hamburger and the blood flows down his arm.

A guy literally peeling the skin off his leg with a knife.

Let’s get to the premier. He’s ready for lights, cameras and action.

Kenney says the government’s first responsibility is to protect the public.

He figures those in authority who allowed the trashing of a neighbourhood consider themselves compassionate and progressive and oh-so-full of virtue while seeing the law-abiding locals living in fear as just a bunch of whiners.

“What is compassionate or progressive about making seniors afraid of going out in their neighbourhood in the evening, about children stumbling on syringes filled with poison in their local park?” asks Kenney.

“What is compassionate about taking somebody who has put their life savings in a small business and losing that because of an arbitrary decision by some politicians who want to congratulate themselves for how virtuous they are.”

In Edmonton, three out of four sites are in one ethnic neighbourhood, Chinatown, where some people don’t speak English, they don’t have a lot of political power and there are a lot of small businesses.

Funny where these drug sites go.

“Why didn’t they put one in Rachel Notley’s neighbourhood near the university? Why didn’t they put one in Mount Royal? I think the question answers itself.”

You betcha.

An expert panel look-see into the drug sites and their impact on surrounding neighbourhoods is expected in a few weeks.

Kenney advises us to stay tuned. We will.

Jeromy Farkas represents the people right across the street from the Calgary drug site.

“This situation can’t go on. People have been patient,” says the councillor.

“It’s abundantly clear what’s going on is contributing to the problem, not solving the problem. Something has got to give. Often people come to me and ask me what the province is going to do to fix this problem created by politicians.

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